Inferno
by Psyromayniak
Summary: Hannibal wants to touch Will on the inside... (Vivisection fic. Graphic descriptions of gore and violence. Will is awake. Established relationship; Will knows Hannibal is the Ripper.)


It was the smell that struck him first; physical sensation having been dulled some faded time ago. Will Graham did not feel the leather straps binding his wrists and ankles, nor did he feel the coldness of the metal gurney onto which he had been placed. Will did not feel the drop in air temperature between the comfort of Doctor Lecter's living room and the basement in which he lay, nor did he feel the warmth of hands placed upon his exposed chest.

No, it was the scent that really made its impression. It was overwhelmingly clinical; as if the entire room – the floor, the brickwork, the man himself now looming above him – had been doused, soaked in disinfectant and bleach. Will could smell the layers. The withdrawn yet imposing sterilisation of the plastic tubing in his nose giving way to the effervescence of ethanol vapour rising from Hannibal's hands replaced by the tang of the yellow-brown iodine spread on his torso finally falling to expose the bluntness of the omnipresent bleach.

Greying shadows in front of closed eyes, the loss of nervous sensation and the lack of oral and aural stimuli placed all of Will Graham's perception in his nose. His empathy with Hannibal at this moment was profound.

"Are you certain you wish me to proceed?" Hannibal's voice was filled with emotion unlike anything Will had heard him speak with before. There was concern running in a deep vein through the tremble of animalistic lust consuming the man's vocal chords, all wrapped in a torn package of controlled professionalism and tied in a bow of simple adoration.

"Unwaveringly," was Will's response.

His eyelids lifted then, revealing to him the dazzling light focused down upon his naked form. Hannibal Lecter was silhouetted against the surgical lamp, the light diffusing around him in a brilliant aura that defined the sharp angles of his figure. He seemed angelic. But what is Lucifer but a fallen angel?

"You will be fine, Will. I need you not to panic. I need you to keep breathing. In and out, in and out, slowly. Keep that rhythm, Will. It will keep you calm."

"I don't have a problem with being calm."

"Few men can look at their own organs in sobriety and remain unaffected."

Will considered the doctor's words as he watched him through half lidded eyes; the man's hands delicately sliding the needle of an IV drip into his forearm. The local anaesthetic that had spread through his upper body some hour before blinded him from the pain. Hannibal had suggested a general, but Will had wanted to remain conscious. He wanted to see the joy that it would bring the man to open him as he did with his victims; to look at and touch the very intricacies of the workings of his body.

The Ripper needed to rip, after all.

Hannibal Lecter breathed deeply, his eyes wandering over the man lying prone before him; taking in every minute detail. He would immortalise this moment in his mind, then he would immortalise it in graphite. Will would become a masterpiece, Hannibal considered. No. He was already a masterpiece. _His_ masterpiece. But this would only add to his value and his beauty.

"Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always," Hannibal's voice a bare murmur.

"Dante."

Will heard Hannibal make a slight noise of confirmation – approval, even – but was soon enveloped in the fervour of his work.

With deft fingers Hannibal removed a scalpel from the dish on the table beside him. He did not wear a jacket; only a clean apron over waistcoat and shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The same attire he sported in the kitchen, marking a labour of love.

He placed the blade two inches below the acromial end of Will's left clavicle. With measured force he pressed down, cutting through the layers of skin and the subcutaneous layer of fat into the muscle tissue of his pectoralis major. Blood welled around the steel, rising to the surface and spilling over in a cascade of rubies as Hannibal cut long and straight along Will's chest before coming to rest at his sternum. Raising the scalpel, Doctor Lecter transferred its sharp edge to the mirrored position on Will's right hand side, once again pressing it into the man's flesh. Will could not feel the cut, but he could sense the pressure distantly. He kept his breathing steady as instructed the slow rise and fall of his thorax a taming metronome for the wild beast above him.

Hannibal's incision met perfectly with his first at the man's sternum, forming a blooded 'V' in his chest. He marvelled at the sight of Will's blood under the soft yellow light of the electric lamp; it was thick and it was dark, slow moving from the twin fissures engraved into Will's soft tissue. It caught the light with all the beauty of diamond, reflecting an entire spectrum of red.

Hannibal brought his blade to the sharp vertex of the V, drawing the edge with resolute hand in the near perfection of a straight line down and down to finally rest at Will's pelvic bone. Hannibal's eyes flicked shut, taking in the coppery scent of fresh blood to savour on his pallet. The hand not holding the scalpel traced fingers along Will's right serratus anterior, silently counting each bump that shadowed a rib. His thumb pressed down, not firmly enough to bruise, and at once the unremitting pulse of the man's heart leapt into his being, seemingly transgressing from its natural state to come alive and bring that life with it surging into Hannibal's veins. Will Graham _was_ life. In bitter contrast to Hannibal Lecter, the reaper: he who brings the living to their death. But by simple definition, if Will was life and Hannibal the taker of, then Will was _his_ to take and own.

"How do you feel?" Hannibal said; the psychiatrist and the surgeon melding into one facade.

"Suspended," Will replied, his voice faint yet in that moment the only sound Hannibal had ever deigned to hear.

Bringing the scalpel to his lips, Hannibal let Will fill him. The warmth and sweet pulse of his skin and his heart beat resonating against his fingers; the sight of him lying so unashamedly nude before him; the echo of his words still ringing against his ear drums whilst the scent and irrevocably saccharine flavour of his blood diffused through his sinuses. Hannibal's tongue flicked over the knife blade once more before he lay it down in a separate dish beside him. He would not be so careless as to use it to cut into Will again: the human mouth is _teeming_ with bacteria.

At once Hannibal had moved his hands to the centre point of the Y shape now adorning Will's torso. Splaying his fingers out either side of the incision, he placed both thumbs at the vertex of the V and sunk them into the wound. Blood pooled around his hands, coating his skin and surrounding it in its comforting warmth. Hannibal ran his thumbs down the tail of the Y, then back up to the very ends of the two intersecting lines. He felt the differences in the layers of Will's flesh; between his skin and fat and muscle. They each felt a concentric wall, surrounding and protecting the truth of Will's being. Hannibal was about to let the barriers fall, exposing Will in a way that no other human being had ever seen to its full and true extent. Will's breathing remained rhythmic. The man on the table began to hum.

Taking a fresh scalpel with a much wider blade from the stand, Hannibal began to peel the tissue away from Will's right side; employing the cutting edge to separate muscle from rib bone. It was like the unfurling of wings of some Lepidoptera for the very first time since leaving its cocoon. Slowly, oh so slowly, Hannibal revealed first Will's breastbone, ribcage and intercostal muscles and then – as he worked nimble fingers and scalpel down further – the nestled organs in his abdominal cavity.

Hannibal paused only briefly to admire the sculpture of Will's intestines before beginning peeling back the flesh on his other side. The next pause, however, whilst even more brief, brought a greater smile the man's face. Will's humming had transformed from contented background noise to a sudden and quite stunning, if much slower and deeper, rendition of Chopin's _Polonaise héroïque_.

Hannibal felt himself glow.

Below him on his operating table Will Graham became an artwork untouched by aeons in Hannibal's eyes. The way the man's liver sat so perfectly, right lobe protruding from beneath his ribcage to settle with his stomach as a large dog would rest its head upon its master's lap. His transverse colon curled protectively around his stomach and the body of his pancreas; his right and left colic flexures allowing his ascending and descending colon to cradle his small intestine.

As a surgeon Hannibal had seen the organs of many men and women, and as the Chesapeake Ripper he had become far more intimately acquainted with many, many more. However, in both respects, those organs had been separated from their owners – both metaphorically as objectified machines that needed to be fixed or removed or replaced in the case of the former and quite literally in the case of the latter. When Hannibal gazed into the abdominal cavity of Will Graham and he saw his tissues quiver with the pulsation of his heart and the steady expansion and contraction of his lungs and diaphragm as the notes of a great composer filled his ears, Hannibal could find no way of separating the man from his internal organs. They were a part of Will and they were _magnificent_.

Blood trickled and pooled from burst capillaries, leaking onto the metal gurney that and staining Hannibal's bare hands and forearms a deep red. Reaching out with tainted but delicate fingers, Doctor Lecter placed his palms on the contours of Will's digestive tract. A tiny, near indistinguishable, smile formed upon his tight-lipped mouth as he considered that beneath his hands there were more than twenty feet of intestines, coiled like a waiting noose on a gibbet. He dug his hands in to the twists of gut, taking gentle hold of Will's ileum and brushing his thumbs over its surface.

_The chitterlings he could make with such beautiful flesh as this... _

Hannibal shook his head. He must concentrate. This was a journey of intimacy and of discovery, not one in which to indulge his culinary fantasies. His fingers trailed upwards from Will's ileum, curling then around the segments of his jejunum briefly before slipping both hands to either side of the man's abdominal cavity. Hannibal tucked the fingers of each hand beneath Will's lower ribs, his left slipping between moist, spongy liver and tough duodenum to cradle Will's gallbladder. His right palm caressed the man's large intestine whilst his fingers splayed over stomach and spleen.

Will's humming drew to a close, the vibrations it sent down through his tissue and into Hannibal's hands replaced by the once again regular contraction and relaxation of his diaphragm. Hannibal could feel this movement of the muscular layer separating his abdominal and thoracic cavities in the gentle movement of Will's liver and stomach against his hands. He closed his eyes again, focusing his attention on the simple feeling of laying his hands against Will's most vital systems; having them move against his skin with the beat of his heart and steady inspiration and expiration of his lungs. Hannibal let his imagination run, feeling in that instant how Will felt when looking into the eyes of a killer through their twisted artworks. He imagined he could sense the exchanges beneath his fingers: the alveoli in Will's lungs swapping oxygen with carbon dioxide in his blood stream, the villi and microvilli in his gut drawing nutrition from food matter broken down by the enzymes in his stomach.

"How do I look?" Will said, dreamily. His eyes wandered across the ceiling of the cellar, aware only vaguely of the bloodied hands within him.

"Quite beautiful, Will," Hannibal replied, drawing his hands slowly out from between Will's organs and laying them atop his ribcage.

"Beauty awakens the soul to act."

"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."

"I wouldn't say you were a sensitive soul, Doctor Lecter."

"And yet I feel within myself deeply moved by this endeavour, as if it were my soul itself weeping."

"Very poetic, Doctor."

"Are we not quoting great poets?"

Will made a resigned sound. His arms fidgeted slightly, kept down by the leather straps tying his wrists. In his peripherals, Will saw Hannibal reach to pick up another implement from the table. He could not make out what it was until the man flicked the switch. It buzzed, quite angrily, and its blade moved rapidly up and down, up and down. _An oscillating saw._

As the doctor brought the glorified power tool closer and closer to Will's breastbone, he felt a panic surge up from the pit of his exposed stomach. His breathing increased rapidly, his heart quickening as the blade loomed above him. The oxygen in the room seemed to be running out, despite the steady stream flowing through the tubing in his nose. He knew he would be fine, he knew it. Hannibal had said to remain calm. Hannibal had said that he would not be harmed. _Permanently._

Hannibal laid a hand to Will's face, cupping his jaw in one bloodied palm and caressing his cheek with a finger. At once Will felt the panic begin to fade; his apprehension of the saw dissipating as at that moment he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Hannibal would not seek to hurt him. The motion of Hannibal's finger tips remained invariable as he brought the saw down to Will's sternum. Will's eyes flicked closed, the vibrations running down into his arms and into his gut. A mere thirty seconds passed before the blade was lifted, along with Doctor Lecter's hand from his cheek – leaving behind a fetching red smear across the left side of his face. Hannibal replaced the tool on the stand and retrieved a retractor from the dish. Its stainless steel body glinted beneath the electric light as it was inserted into the single, straight incision in Will's breastbone.  
Hannibal's next moves were made with a gentleness and delicacy that was reserved for only the most precious of his belongings. Slowly, gradually he widened the retractor; separating the two sides of Will's sternum to reveal like the brightest pearl in the shell of an oyster Will Graham's beating heart.

As Hannibal exhaled a slight tremor could be discerned in his breath. The sight of Will Graham, the most wondrous Will Graham, who's empathetic ability and keen imagination made him a treasure untold and unbounded to Hannibal, so spread out and laid bare stirred something within the doctor. It surged adrenaline through his veins and opened his senses in the way that his first kill for pleasure had done all those years ago.

Hannibal's hands seemed to move forward on their own, burying themselves in the cavity of Will's thorax. His fingers found the throbbing muscle and sought to encompass it; creating a domed lattice that did not restrict its movement. The backs of Hannibal's hands touched the soft, undulating tissue of Will's lungs whilst his palms became heated against the pumping mass beneath them. At once the doctor's face broke from its demure expression, his mouth widening in a toothy grin.

Below him, Will stared up into the expanse of Hannibal Lecter's soul as his person suit fell away to reveal the dark creature beneath. Will saw him exposed – more so than he, with his chest and abdomen splayed open for all the world to see – and felt a wave of terror run through him, followed presently by an equally strong wave of joy. Many times had Will seen cracks in Hannibal's facade, but never before had the curtain so completely fallen. It was beauty, in its own way, a dark mass of writhing blackness that was so singular in its existence. Doctor Lecter was not a psychopath, as other serial killers were. He was not insane in any way. It was purely his primal nature; the calling of his soul once shattered but pieced back together again, shard after shard, and held together with blood.

Hannibal's hands, now slick with bodily fluid, passed lovingly over the upper lobes of Will's lungs, pressed between them, the intercostal muscles and the rib bones that protected their delicacy from the harshness of the world. With each breath Will drew into his chest, Hannibal felt a wave of electricity jumping through his fingers. Never before had he been so less in doubt of the beauty of nature and of life itself. Will was a privileged man, in this moment, for Hannibal's next thought was of the wonder and the beauty of watching that life come to a sudden end, only to be reborn in another form just as beautiful. But Will and the puzzle of his mind was too sacred to let slip into that stretching oblivion just yet. There were far too many secrets to unlock; far too many more ways to appreciate this man's splendour before his grand finale.

No, Hannibal would close this man up, now. Let him heal. Let him carry the scars he brought upon him and remember the touch of his hands and his hands alone upon the very intricacies of his body. Will would carry these with him forever and for always, until he met his end.

Hannibal would make sure that that wouldn't be for a very long time, yet.

Notes: "Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always" - Dante "Beauty awakens the soul to act." - Dante "Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears." - Edgar Allan Poe I've learnt quite a lot about anatomy and internal organs from writing this fic. Hooray!


End file.
